Matters Memo

City of Boulder City Council Agenda Item Meeting Date: August 27, 2026

Agenda Title Enhancing Boulder’s Wildfire Resilience through (1) the Development of a Comprehensive Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub and (2) a Comprehensive Assessment and Analysis of Current or Planned City WildfireRelated Programs, Projects and Actions

Staff Contact • • •

Brian Anacker, Science and Climate Resilience Sr Manager, OSMP Jamie Barker, Public Information Officer for Boulder Fire-Rescue and Wildfire Ready, Communications and Engagement Pam Davis, Assistant City Manager, City Manager’s Office

Executive Summary The purpose of this study session is to provide a progress update and seek city council feedback on the 2026 Wildfire Resilience Council Priority Project, established at Council's January 2026 retreat. Protecting lives and property drives everything the city does on wildfire resilience, including a substantial and growing investment:  

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Approximately $10.5 million annually across 10 departments for wildfire resilience activities, a 10-department Wildfire Resilience Team, supported by staff ranging from City Manager’s Office and department directors to fire chiefs and field staff, with expertise in community risk reduction, fuels management, wildfire response, and communications, a long and growing list of accomplishments, and a commitment to continuously learn, evolve and improve.

That work is guided by a cross-departmental vision (developed as part of this project): We continually work towards making the community safer and stronger by preparing for wildfire and reducing risk to life safety. Boulder stands as a model of comprehensive wildfire resilience, where community awareness translates into proactive and meaningful action, and advanced natural area management harmonizes ecological health with public safety. Through shared community responsibility and partnership, we reduce risk and enhance resilience. With that vision in mind, this memo presents progress on the 2026 Wildfire Resilience Council Priority Project to address two wildfire resilience priorities through a 9-month effort (Fig. 1): 

Task 1: The Development of a Comprehensive Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub.  This task creates a virtual space where property owners can find guidance and inspiration to further their mitigation efforts, making fire mitigation not only a shared responsibility but also a shared community passion. The components of the Hub are drafted as follows: ▪ Watch Videos

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Learn about Community Efforts Estimate Mitigation Work High Impact Projects by Price Wildfire Resilience as a Weekend Project Talk to Your Insurance Company Get neighbor and community support Other resources such as State of Colorado incentives, Wildfire Partners information, Fire Aside login and Detailed Home Assessment (DHA) access, a link to the Wildfire Ready Webpage as well as a list of city buildings where folks can view fire resilient landscaping and listen to a podcast about it. Task 2. A Comprehensive Assessment and Analysis of Current or Planned City Wildfire-Related Programs, Projects and Actions  This task creates an integrated framework for understanding, prioritizing and measuring the city's wildfire resilience work and is organized into three phases: ▪ Phase 1 (Inventory): Identify and consolidate all completed, active and planned city projects and actions related to wildfire resiliency (Attachment A) into 25 program areas (Fig. 2) organized under the three National Cohesive Strategies. ▪ Phase 2 (Prioritize): Of these 25 program areas, identify and select 10 “Tier 1” programs that have the greatest opportunity to reduce risk. Then, assess the risk profile of areas within Boulder’s Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and create a spatial Risk Index to group the WUI as follows: Highest, Very High, High, and Moderate (Fig. 3). ▪ Phase 3 (Measure and Track): Finally, develop measures for all Tier 1 programs, with annual tracking of targets (Table 1). Staff will return for a second study session on October 22 with finalized measures and targets for all 10 Tier 1 programs.

This project establishes a comprehensive framework for inventorying actions, prioritizing resources, measuring and tracking progress, and providing the community with the information and tools needed to take action. The robust community engagement of the 2024 update to the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) underpins this work. The process drew public input through four webinars, a project webpage and interactive story map, open house

events, written public feedback, and a public survey. That engagement has continued and deepened, such as through the Open Space Board of Trustees which has taken up wildfire resilience at 15 meetings since 2023 accompanied by robust public comment. This project builds on that foundation, taking the strategies the community helped shape and making it more accessible for residents. Staff's goal is to use this comprehensive prioritization framework to strengthen Boulder’s wildfire resilience, improve accountability, and support continuous improvement as conditions and risks evolve.

Questions for Council 1. Does Council have questions or feedback on the Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub and its approach to connecting homeowners to resources, guidance, and incentives? 2. Does Council have questions or feedback on the proposed wildfire resilience framework progress to date to prioritize resources and measure progress, including the inventory of programs and actions, Tier 1 program designations, geographic risk groupings, and measures and targets? 3. Are there significant wildfire resilience programs, actions, risks or considerations that Council believes are missing from the framework and should be considered before the October 22 report?

Alignment with City Plans and City Council History Sustainability, Equity and Resilience (SER) Framework and Citywide Strategic Plan Alignment SER Framework Goal Area   

Safe Livable Environmentally Sustainable

Citywide Strategic Plan    

Strategy #1: Focus community safety efforts on reducing community harm at critical locations known for high incident rates or significant vulnerabilities. Strategy #2: Advance efforts to enhance regional disaster prevention, preparedness, and response that leverage existing partnerships and prioritize city investments. Strategy #9: Increase community and ecosystem resilience to the current and future impacts of climate change. Strategy #11: Prioritize sustainability values through new and existing policies.

The wildfire prioritization framework directly supports these strategies by identifying areas of elevated risk and focusing existing resources on programs and locations with the greatest potential for risk reduction.

Alignment with Additional City Plans The projects and programs mentioned in this memo are also related to over 20 plans across the city. The primary plan supporting Wildfire Ready work is the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), which was most recently updated in 2024.

City Council History    

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April 2022: Council Study Session.  Wildfire Resilience Presentation Feb 2023: Wildland Fire Resilience Information Packet to City Council.  02.16.23 City Council Agenda May 2024: Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) Final Draft Discussion  Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) Final Draft Discussion Dec 2024: Council Study Session: Wildfire Hardening Policy and Regulation Updates & Waterwise Landscaping Policies and Regulation Updates.  12.12.24 Agenda;  See attachment B for Summary of Current City Wildfire Mitigation Work May 2025: City Council Meeting

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 Wildland Urban Interface Code Adoption July 2025: City Council Study Session  Waterwise Landscaping Sep 2025: City Council Meeting  First Reading, Waterwise Landscaping  Wildfire Ready – Citywide Wildfire Resilience Update April 2026: Power Reliability and Resilience  April 2026 Power Reliability and Resilience memo May 2026: Study Session including charter committee recommendation of a potential charter change to Sec. 167 regarding purposes of open space land to explicitly recognize wildfire resilience.  05.14.2026 City Council Agenda

Analysis Wildfire Risk in Boulder: A Growing Threat, An Urgent Response Wildfire is a natural process with major ecological benefits. The natural areas in the Boulder region have historically burned every 5 to 20 years, depending on the vegetation type and conditions. What has changed is the build-up of fuels from 100+ years of fire suppression, associated with the increase in the number of people living and working adjacent to wildlands, combined with increased drying, shorter winters, extreme winds, and more human-caused ignitions. These and other factors have increased the likelihood and potential consequences of wildfire in Boulder, making wildfire resilience an increasingly important public safety priority. Boulder's wildfire risk is higher than 97% of counties in the United States. Moreover, the Front Range corridor from Golden to Lyons is among the highest wildfire risk areas in Colorado. The urgency of wildfire resilience work was brought into sharp focus in the Marshall Fire of December 2021. The fire burned over 6,000 acres, forced more than 35,000 people to evacuate, destroyed over 1,000 homes in a matter of hours, and resulted in the loss of two lives. It was the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history at the time and it spread through a suburban neighborhood, driven by extreme winds, on a December afternoon.

Boulder is not alone in facing extreme wildfires:    

The 2023 Maui fire killed more than 100 people and destroyed Lahaina. The 2025 Los Angeles fires destroyed more than 12,000 structures and killed at least 28 people. Wildfires in Colorado and Utah have claimed the lives of four firefighters this year. Wildfires this summer in Spokane, Washington, burned over 10,000 acres, destroyed at least 800 structures, and forced nearly 65,000 people to evacuate.

Boulder's Long-Standing, Strong Commitment to Wildfire Resilience As mentioned above, wildfire has long been a natural part of Boulder’s landscape, with important ecological benefits and dependencies. At the same time, more people living and building in fire-adapted landscapes, combined with changing climate conditions, have increased the potential for wildfire to threaten public safety. Boulder's wildfire resilience work has deep roots. Some examples include: 

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Boulder Fire-Rescue established a wildfire coordinator position in 1991, formalized its Wildfire Division in 1998, and opened Station 8 as a dedicated wildfire facility in 2016. Station 8 is backed by an extensive network of mutual aid agreements that ensure additional resources can be deployed rapidly. The city passed a wood shake ordinance banning wood shingles in 1994 with required compliance by 2014. The Open Space and Mountain Parks department was among the first in the country to develop a Forest Ecosystem Management Plan (1999) and a dedicated forest crew, which has completed 2500+ acres of forest management. The original Community Wildfire Protection Plan was created in 2007 and was recently updated in 2024. The International Wildland Urban Interface Code was adopted in 2013. In 2017, strategic cattle grazing as a grassland and fuels management tool was introduced in the Shanahan Ridge open space area.

Dozens of wildfire resilience actions and projects are being carried out across the organization at any given time (Attachment A).

Post-Marshall Acceleration: The Climate Tax and City Wildfire Resilience Team Boulder voters approved an updated Climate Tax in November 2022. Approximately $1.5 million of the resulting annual revenue is dedicated to wildfire resilience. This dedicated funding supplements the City's existing multimillion-dollar, cross-departmental investment in wildfire resilience and has accelerated work that would otherwise compete for resources within existing departmental budgets. That funding has supported the 2024 CWPP update, expansion of the Wildfire Resilience Assistance Program, growth of the Detailed Home Assessment program, enhanced fuels mitigation efforts in the WUI, community preparedness, among other investments. In 2022, a cross-departmental Wildfire Resilience Team was also formalized across 10 departments, including          

Boulder Fire-Rescue, City Manager's Office, Climate Initiatives, Communications and Engagement, Finance, Office of Disaster Management, Open Space and Mountain Parks, Parks and Recreation, Planning and Development Services, and Utilities.

The Wildfire Resilience Team has an Executive Team, Committee Leads, and Core Team structure providing coordination and accountability across all three National Cohesive Strategies:   

Fire Adapted Communities, Resilient Landscapes, and Safe and Effective Wildfire Response.

The result has been a meaningful acceleration of wildfire resilience work, with particular emphasis on the WUI. A few recent highlights include: • • • • • • • • • • • •

400+ Detailed Home Assessments completed annually with a concentration in highest-risk areas $368,623 in WRAP grants distributed with over $664,000 in community match Updated and expanded WUI boundary and stronger building codes effective August 2025 Expanded OSMP staffing to reduce fuels in the WUI 4 miles of new perimeter mowing buffer strips along the western boundary 500+ acres of strategic grazing to control the invasive species tall oatgrass 50-acre grazing pilot in high-risk areas adjacent to communities completed An Urban Conflagration Plan completed and stress-tested Ignition-prevention communications, signage and patrols enhanced Xcel advance notification requirements and coordination with ODM established for Public Safety Power Shutoff events Xcel infrastructure hardening: commitments secured for 5 feeders serving Boulder community and critical infrastructure The launch of the Wildfire Ready platform and Anchor Point newsletter.

The 2026 Council Priority on Wildfire Resilience: Two Tasks

Fig. 1. 2026 Council Priority Project tasks and schedule. Council established this priority project at its January 2026 retreat, recognizing two specific tasks: Task 1: Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub The purpose of the Hub is to drive community members to take action on mitigation projects. It is, in part, a response to the community indicating that they needed more guidance on what to do after completing a Detailed Home Assessment

(DHA). However, it is important to note that the Hub is being created to be used by anyone (DHA or not), to encourage people to take up mitigation projects, and to push for continued and sustainable resilience practices. •

Hub Components o Instructional videos: A collection of videos that helps improve general understanding of and action steps needed for resilience. Videos include but are not limited to home hardening instructions, defensible space instructions, what is the WUI, understanding the WUI code, learning about water and fire, and resilient urban landscaping o Learn about community efforts: A mix of videos, statements, and other testimonials about work from community members and organizations on the mitigation work that they are completing and what was easy for them or a good place to start. This section allows folks to learn from their peers as well as see the whole collective of work that is happening towards resilience that is not just city-government work. o Estimate mitigation work: Use the Headwater Economics home hardening calculator that can be found at https://builtforwildfire.org/. This calculator asks the person who wants to do a mitigation project various questions (answers can be found in the DHA if they have one) and then suggests project ideas and their estimated costs based on the information that has been provided. This calculator is project forward, cost afterward. o High impact projects by price: This section will provide people with project ideas by budget range. o Wildfire resilience as a weekend project: Sometimes it can be hard to find somewhere to start, so this section is built to provide 30-60-90 minute project suggestions for a weekend project that increases the resilience of the home/property. These projects will be considerate of ability, cost, and completion. These projects will also be only a start to a larger effort towards mitigation as none of them alone mean that a home or property is mitigated. o Wildfire conversations: This Hub section includes language for property owners to speak with their insurance company and neighbors about ongoing or needed wildfire mitigation work. Property owners often reach out to staff to ask about how they can start a conversation with their insurance company about the work that local government and they are doing to lessen risk for their property. Property owners are also often frustrated by the amount of mitigation work that they do when their neighbor has done none. This section will

assist property owners in how to start and have these conversations. It will provide them with talking points and incentives to encourage dialogue about the work. o Other resources: The Hub will also include other resources from regional partners and the state that encourages, or assists in, reducing risk. Incentives are also being developed within this space, such as yard signs that highlight work of individual property owners, yard sticks that replace non-native or high-risk plants to indicate mitigation, etc. • Hub Assets o Videos o Flyers/Handouts o Webpages o Calculator tool o Incentives o Audio clips o Resources (external links) • Subject Matter Experts o Each asset is being developed through work groups that include subject matter experts across the whole wildfire team • Gathering Feedback o Towards the end of 2026, there will be multiple opportunities for the community to provide feedback on the Hub, Hub assets, accessibility and use. ▪ Hub survey: Gathering information about what is being used, how did people get to the page, and what they were looking for ▪ Website analytics: The use of webpage analytics to understand initial website use, demand, heatmapping, etc ▪ Wildfire Pop Up: Gathering information from community members in a few areas around the city and giving SMEs and community members an opportunity to discuss the hub, additional needs, or future desires.

Task 2: Wildfire Mitigation Priorities Assessment The goal of Task 2 is to make the city's current wildfire resilience work more understandable, strategic, focused, and measurable. Task 2 is organized into three phases: Phase 1. Enhanced Inventory: What are we doing to increase wildfire resilience? City staff began by compiling every wildfire resilience project across departmental workplans, then added project ideas drawn from the CWPP and other city plans through a plan action review. After removing duplicates and normalizing entries, the inventory totaled ~130 draft and active projects (Attachment A). Feedback made it clear that 130 projects was too granular to be used as a planning and communication tool. In response, projects were organized and nested under higher-level “programs,” with each program ideally having a single program manager and one or more projects under it. Programs were designed to be meaningful and manageable units of work, each with a name and description that conveys what the program area does. Feedback also emphasized the need to make WUI-focused work more visible and prominent within the inventory of work, and the program names and descriptions reflect that idea. The result is 25 program areas organized into the three National Cohesive Strategies and a fourth grouping called “Responsibly Governed.” This structure is intended to provide a manageable level of organization: projects remain visible and actionable, while program areas provide a common framework for prioritization, accountability and measurement. This program inventory (Attachment B) serves as the foundation for Phase 2 prioritization. The Tier 1 programs from Attachment B (see Phase 2. Prioritization below) are also presented here as text: 

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Fire Adapted Community (FAC)1. Wildfire Risk Reduction for Homes & Property Detailed Home Assessments and targeted grant funding (WRAP: Wildfire Resilience Assistance Program) to help residents in the WUI (Wildland Urban Interface: where the developed land meets natural areas) take specific actions to improve wildfire resilience. FAC2. Wildfire Resilient Building & Landscaping Standards Implementation and enforcement of existing building, safety, and landscaping codes for wildfire risk reduction in the Wildland Urban Interface. FAC3. Community Emergency Preparedness

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Disaster preparedness workshops, evacuation protocol training and education, and improving emergency notification. Resilient Landscape (RL)1. Wildfire Fuels Management in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Reduce wildfire fuels on city-managed lands in the WUI through strategic mowing, targeted grazing, forest treatment, ditch fuel treatment, prescribed fire, and cross boundary coordination. RL2. Wildfire Fuel Breaks Create, enhance, maintain wildfire fuel breaks on city-managed lands in strategic locations such as trails, roads, property boundaries, utility corridors, and near critical infrastructure. RL3. Prescribed Fire Program Use controlled burns for fuel reduction and ecosystem health on city-owned properties. Safe and Effective Response (WR)1. Wildfire Response Wildland fire command and coordination for City resources during wildland fire incidents, including implementation of the Structure Protection Plan to prioritize and defend values at risk. WR2. Tactical Evacuation Evacuation planning and execution, traffic control, and zone-by-zone resident movement. WR3. Ignition Prevention & Utility Infrastructure Hardening Utility hardening, patrols, signage, burn restrictions, and closures to reduce human-caused ignitions.

Phase 2. Prioritization: What programs should be prioritized and where should we focus them geographically? Program Prioritization All 25 programs are important to making Boulder a more wildfire resilient community. That said, certain programs offer a greater opportunity to reduce community wildfire risk than others. Therefore, a tiering system with two levels and definitions was developed: 

“Tier 1” programs are those that staff's structured prioritization identified as having the greatest potential opportunity to reduce community wildfire risk. Tier 1 programs will be prioritized, especially in the highest-risk WUI sections (see below), and will receive heightened consideration in resource allocation decisions. They are also the first programs to have measures and progress tracking developed, which is the work of Phase 3 (see below).

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“Tier 2” programs need resources and attention and are important components of a Wildfire Ready Boulder. Decisions about measures, progress tracking, and resource allocation for Tier 2 programs will be made with the needs of Tier 1 programs in mind.

To arrive at these tier designations, staff developed an interactive, web-based pairwise comparison survey to compare programs against each other and indicate which would reduce community wildfire risk the most. The survey was completed by staff serving on the city’s Wildfire Resilience Team and 13 peer agencies, hand-selected from municipalities with a WUI across the western United States. The results were used to designate three Tier 1 programs per National Cohesive Strategy. The Responsibly Governed programs were not included in the survey. However, the Wildfire Resilience Team designated Wildfire Communications and Engagement as a Tier 1 program given its role as a catalyst across all other programs and its direct connection to Task 1 of this project. The final list of 10 Tier 1 programs are labeled in Attachment B and listed above. The resulting Tier 1 designations are therefore expert-informed priorities, not a determination that Tier 2 programs are unimportant. All 25 program areas remain part of the City's wildfire resilience strategy. Geographic Risk Prioritization Geographic prioritization enables the highest-priority programs to have maximum impact by concentrating resources in the areas of greatest risk. The rankings and groupings presented here are draft. Staff will continue to refine the geographic risk analysis between now and the October 22 Council report, and the results may shift as additional data and expert input are incorporated. The city's existing WUI map already establishes that risk is higher within the WUI than outside it (https://bouldercolorado.gov/wildland-urban-interface-code). But the WUI is a large area, and staff sought additional geographic specificity to better inform how and where to direct program work. The first step was confirming that Boulder's western WUI carries substantially higher risk than its eastern WUI. Staff modeled this directly using three risk attributes: likelihood of occurrence, potential intensity (composed of intensity, rate of

spread, and fire type), and exposure. The western WUI scored higher risk (5.4) compared to the eastern WUI (3.4), consistent with what the CSFS Wildfire Risk Viewer shows (https://co-pub.coloradoforestatlas.org) and with the expectations of subject matter experts. Staff then divided the Western WUI into 12 sections. The eastern boundary was set at the eastern edge of buildings classified as IR1 and IR2. IR1 and IR2 correspond to the city's “ignition-resistant” construction classifications under the building code and in practice tend to represent the first and second rows of homes in the WUI along the WUI edge, the structures most directly exposed to wildfire. The western boundary was set at 1,500 feet from the nearest structure, following a fuel management standard for fuel breaks to limit ember cast. Sections were drawn north to south based on landscape features, such as major roads, and with reference to evacuation zone boundaries. The 12 sections were then ranked using two complementary methods. 1. A qualitative gallery-walk style workshop brought together subject matter experts from across relevant disciplines to rank the sections based on professional judgment and expertise, guided by the straightforward question of “where is risk the highest”. 2. A follow-on quantitative model independently ranked the same 12 sections using three risk attributes: susceptibility of values at risk to fire impacts, potential fire intensity, and exposure of values at risk to potential fire. The qualitative and quantitative results aligned closely. To create one final rank, each section's qualitative rank and quantitative rank were combined, with the quantitative rank counted at 70% weight and the qualitative rank at 30%. Finally, the sections were grouped together into three Risk Groups: • • •

Highest Risk, Very High Risk, and High Risk.

Each Risk Group contained four WUI sections. The main benefit of these Risk Groups (vs the 12 sections) is that they provide staff with multiple sections to draw from when deploying programs, allowing the work to be informed by

operational logistics, community interest, and partner capacity. Section names and groupings are shown in Fig. 2 on the following page. The remainder of the WUI, IR3 areas west of Broadway, and all WUI areas east of Broadway, is classified as Moderate Risk. The Risk Index is intended as a resource-allocation and planning tool, not a prediction of where a wildfire will occur or a guarantee of outcomes. It identifies relative risk under typical and foreseeable conditions and should be considered alongside operational feasibility, community conditions, partner capacity and program-specific objectives.

Fig. 2. WUI Risk Index, a geographic risk prioritization tool, showing the 12 WUI sections placed into three Risk Groups, and IR1 and IR2 parcels.

A final level of spatial priority distinguishes IR1 and IR2 parcels from IR3. As mentioned above, IR1 and IR2 correspond to the city's “ignition-resistant” construction classifications under the building code and in practice tend to represent the first and second rows of homes in the WUI along the WUI edge, the structures most directly exposed to wildfire. These homes warrant particular attention within priority sections. Taken together, we now have four levels of geographic prioritization. These layers should not be interpreted as four independent risk scores; rather, they provide progressively greater geographic specificity for targeting different types of work. 1. WUI vs. non-WUI, 2. Western vs. Eastern WUI, 3. risk groups Highest, Very High, and High within the western WUI, each with 4 sections, and 4. IR1/IR2 vs. IR3 structures. It is also important to be clear that the WUI Risk Index identifies where risk is highest under typical and foreseeable conditions and directs resources accordingly. It does not model extreme fire weather events, and it cannot guarantee outcomes. For example, the Marshall Fire burned through areas that would not have scored as highest risk under normal modeling assumptions. The Risk Index sets priorities under the conditions that we can reasonably plan for and does not promise outcomes. With that framing in place, the geographic specificity directly informs the measures framework: Targets and measures can reference the specific risk groups, and program work can be aligned accordingly.

Phase 3. Measures and Tracking: How do we know whether we are making progress?

Fig. 3. The steps involved in developing measures for the Tier 1 programs, from broad vision to measurable target. For the 10 Tier 1 programs, staff are developing one or more measures per program through a series of facilitated workshops. The process begins with the shared vision, introduced above: We continually work towards making the community safer and stronger by preparing for wildfire and reducing risk to life safety. Boulder stands as a model of comprehensive wildfire resilience, where community

awareness translates into proactive and meaningful action, and advanced natural area management harmonizes ecological health with public safety. Through shared community responsibility and partnership, we reduce risk and enhance resilience. From there, staff describe what success looks like for each program in qualitative terms, articulating end outcomes such as reducing home ignition, reducing flame lengths, and containing the size of wildfires. The team then brainstorms possible measures, assigns them to the logic model chain of inputs, outputs, and outcomes, and selects recommended measures based on three criteria:   

direct control, outcome alignment, and feasibility.

Targets are then developed. The draft concept is that targets will be established under three different capacity scenarios:   

Current (realistic given current resources and capacities) Enhanced (more ambitious and assumes enhanced resourcing and tools) Reduced (conservative, if resourcing contracts)

Because wildfire outcomes are influenced by many factors outside the City's control and may occur infrequently, the measures emphasize actions and intermediate outcomes that the City can influence and track, while using periodic risk assessments and modeling to evaluate broader changes in wildfire risk. Targets will be generally oriented toward an end-of-2030 time horizon, chosen to align with the timing of the next CWPP update. This memo presents a worked example to give Council a sense of the measures framework. Additional measures will be shared as part of the August 27 presentation. Further workshops with wildfire professionals are planned for September,

reflecting the technical nature of the work and the value of expert input in shaping measures that are credible and defensible. The full set of measures for all 10 Tier 1 programs will be presented at the October 22 Council study session. For this memo, the worked example is as follows:

Program •

RL1. Wildfire Fuels Management in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)

Outcome(s)   

Lower flame lengths and keep fire on the ground Slow the rate of wildfire spread Maintain or improve ecosystem health

Measure (with target)

100% of city-owned acres in WUI natural areas in all 12 priority WUI sections are treated to wildfire risk reduction prescription by the end of 2030. Definitions   

“WUI natural areas” refers to the natural vegetation within 1,500feet from the nearest structure where direct flame exposure and ember cast are a significant risk. “Treatment” means actively managing vegetation through grazing, mowing, forestry work, and other methods. “Prescription” means to bring conditions within a set of quantitative standards for grass height, tree canopy spacing, tree canopy base height (distance from the ground to tree limbs), and dead material removal that reduce fire behavior to manageable levels.

Target  

The 2030 target is set for current resourcing, reflecting current staffing and budget. Enhanced resourcing would move the completion year sooner; reduced resourcing would push it out. In 2030, when the target is reached, the work does not stop. Fuels management requires ongoing reentry and monitoring.

Measure Evaluation   

Control: The city directly controls treatment of city-owned land, making this a high-control measure. Outcome alignment: Treatment to prescription directly reduces flame length, rate of spread, and ember production, aligning closely with the program’s desired outcomes Feasibility: Tracking treated acreage is manageable through existing reporting. The primary work is relating treated acres to total treatable acreage and codifying the baseline.

Challenges 

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The City cannot directly control wildfire behavior or the conditions that drive it, so this example focuses on treating Cityowned land to an established wildfire risk-reduction prescription rather than a measure around fire behavior. The City also cannot manage privately owned land directly. It owns roughly 70% of the acreage within WUI natural areas; the remaining 30% is privately held and requires separate approaches, including cross-boundary partnerships and voluntary participation.

The full set of measures, once finalized, will be compiled into a public-facing dashboard covering all 10 Tier 1 programs, providing Council and the community with a consistent, annual view of progress toward risk reduction across the highestpriority programs and highest-risk areas of the WUI.

For tracking, an annual update cycle will be used to track progress and prompt updates to measures and targets as needed under a continuous improvement/adaptive management model.

Anticipated Fiscal and Workplan Impacts The city's annual investment in wildfire resilience has grown substantially since the Marshall Fire. The citywide budget for wildfire resilience across 10 departments totals over $10.5M annually for each of 2025, 2026, and 2027. These figures should be considered conservative estimates: they do not include indirect costs such as administrative and technical support from departments like the City Attorney's Office and IT, and they do not include grant funding received. In a significant fire year, actual costs would be substantially higher, as response operations and post-fire recovery can be very costly. The most meaningful baseline comparison point is 2022, which reflects budgets approved before the Marshall Fire occurred in December 2021. Staff is currently finalizing the 2022 estimate and will include it in the October memo to give Council a clear picture of how investment has grown in the years since. Part of this investment comes from the Climate Tax Fund, a Boulder voter-approved measure from 2022 that supports enhanced climate initiatives and actions across the community. The fund totals approximately $6.5M annually, of which $1.5M is dedicated specifically to wildfire resilience. In addition to the $1.5M dedicated investment, additional funds from the tax support our partnership with Xcel Energy and regulatory advocacy work which is also integral to the city’s overall wildfire resilience strategy. This dedicated funding stream has accelerated work that would otherwise compete for resources within existing departmental budgets. The City's approximately $10.5 million annual investment in wildfire resilience across 10 departments represents existing commitments and currently resourced programs. Meaningful increases in one area generally require trade-offs with other wildfire resilience activities or new resources. In the absence of new resources, the most impactful thing the city can do is to continue to direct existing investment toward the highest-risk places and highest-impact programs. That is exactly what this project aims to deliver. The city has been successful at making the most of current resources through strategic reallocations and leveraging state and federal grants. For example, through advocacy and partnership with Xcel Energy, the city has helped advance an

estimated $0.5 billion in utility wildfire mitigation investments that benefit Boulder, as part of Xcel Energy’s larger statewide wildfire mitigation effort. However, it is important to note that every reallocation involves a trade-off: resources shifted toward the highest-risk WUI sections are resources shifted away from something else. This project extends that approach by making those trade-offs explicit and ensuring future prioritization decisions are tied to our best opportunities for risk reduction and to measurable outcomes. If new investment becomes available, the prioritization framework produced here will help ensure it goes where it will do the most good, and that any associated trade-offs are understood before commitments are made.

Equity Analysis A City of Boulder Rapid Response Equity Assessment was completed for this project and is available upon request. Wildfire risk is not distributed evenly across Boulder, nor are residents equally positioned to take action to reduce their risk. The City's geographic risk analysis appropriately begins with the physical characteristics that determine how wildfire spreads, while equity considerations help inform how the City designs programs, allocates assistance, engages residents and addresses barriers to action. Boulder's highest wildfire risk is concentrated along the Wildland Urban Interface, especially in the west, where fire can most easily spread from wildland into the built environment and threaten the city as a whole. Hardening these prioritized areas protects everyone, not just those who live there: a resilient western edge reduces the chance that fire ever reaches the rest of Boulder. Reducing the likelihood and severity of a major wildfire provides citywide benefits, including reducing the potential for displacement, loss of housing and other impacts that can disproportionately affect residents with fewer resources to prepare for and recover from disasters. This equity value is indirect but real. Vulnerable and historically excluded populations, including lower income residents, renters, seniors, people with disabilities, and non-English speakers, are concentrated disproportionately outside the WUI, so they benefit from reduced citywide fire risk without needing to take urgent home hardening actions individually. At the same time, the WUI may include disproportionately higher income neighborhoods, meaning those best able to access resilience resources aren't always those most in need of city financial support to act.

How equity is embedded in this project The two tasks of this project have equity considerations. 

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Task 1, the Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub, is designed to help property owners take action that reduces risk. The hub itself will be an accessible, multi-modal webspace with a variety of presentations and consideration of a range of budgets and work types. Hub assets provide home hardening and defensible space information through many different lens, focusing on project impact or budget, ability to do the work and motivation, engaging neighborhoods in the work and showcasing the full community scope of wildfire. Each hub asset is designed to meet someone where they are and drive action. o The Hub builds on the foundation of the Wildfire Resilience Assistance Program (WRAP), which was developed with the city's Racial Equity Instrument at its core. In 2024, WRAP incorporated multiple equity strategies: as needed customized payment options to reduce cost barriers, translation support for nonEnglish speakers, in-person assistance for older adults and manufactured home residents, provided targeted outreach to absentee landlords in in the WUI and provided dedicated funding for manufactured home communities, a priority identified through the equity tool and community connector feedback. In 2025 and 2026, WRAP continued to offer as needed customized payment options to reduce cost barriers, translation support for non-English speakers and in-person assistance for older adults. Due to changing program priorities and logistics, volume and type of program outreach was adjusted and there was a pause on and manufactured home-specific programming. The new multi-unit dwelling program, which was piloted in 2025 and was fully rolled out in 2026, incorporated equity measures in grant program scoring such as geographic location within the City of Boulder WUI map and Racial Equity Index map and percentage of renters vs. owners within the community. Task 2, the Wildfire Mitigation Priorities Assessment, embeds equity considerations directly into the prioritization framework. The WUI Risk Index, which directs program resources toward highest-risk sections, is accompanied by explicit documentation of its geographic rationale and a demographic assessment of whether any groups are systematically under or over-served by the resulting resource allocation. Individual projects will be reviewed using the equity considerations as part of project-specific planning

Climate, Resilience, and Sustainability Considerations Wildfire resilience work requires prioritizing community safety and balancing ecosystem health. Most grazing, defensible space, prescribed burning, and forest thinning work has climate and sustainability impacts. As described in the City of Boulder's Resilience Strategy: "Boulder's natural hazards are tightly linked, necessitating a comprehensive and integrated approach to risk mitigation. Droughts stress the city's ecosystems, helping accelerate the damage of pests to forests, thereby increasing the fuel for wildfires, and consequently denuding slopes and increasing flash flooding risk. But this cycle itself is not linear; each event builds on another and sets the stage for even more complex interactions. Therefore, to address these interlinked hazards, activities and programs must be well coordinated, using a systemic approach to reduce multiple risks at the same time and prepare communities to handle disruptions of any kind" (2016, page 3). Task 1 supports the community-level behavior change needed to complement landscape-scale risk reduction, recognizing that resilience requires action from the individual parcel to the watershed. Task 2 represents the kind of integrated, crossdepartmental approach called for in the Resilience Strategy. The city regularly engages with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, the state agency responsible for regulating utilities, to champion clean, renewable, and affordable energy. Through testimony, city staff represent Boulder's priorities, ensuring the community's needs shape state-level decisions. Most recently, city staff have been engaging with the PUC and Xcel Energy’s Wildfire Mitigation Plan and funding, an effort that connects directly to the Power Resilience and Utility Coordination program area within the Council priority's program inventory. This memo includes information related to a variety of programs and projects within the city's Wildfire Ready space. Information related to climate, resilience, and sustainability considerations for each specific program or project can be provided upon request.

Community Engagement The 2026 Council Priority Project tasks have specific engagement considerations and approaches. Task 1: Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub The Wildfire Ready Hub’s purpose is to inform the community and drive action of mitigation efforts. The type of engagement that the Hub is focused on is within the inform area of engagement. Anyone can use the Hub, property owners, renters, people with or without a Detailed Home Assessment, and people within and outside of the city. The actionable steps that the Hub provides, while tailored to City of Boulder community members, incorporates best practices from the wildfire community at large and is therefore applicable to anyone wanting to make an impact. Creating the Hub itself includes community outreach and some engagement with a soft launch and opportunity for feedback from the community and other interested parties. This will be to make sure the Hub meets the needs of those it is made to serve. After official launch, the Hub will also continue to accept feedback so that changes can be made. Targeted outreach for the Hub will prioritize properties within the highest risk areas in the city as well as those who may face barriers to mitigating with the information we have provided now. Engagement, by way of informing, will happen through traditional media, social media, city newsletters, table pop-us, etc. Task 2: Wildfire Mitigation Priorities Assessment The prioritization framework developed in Task 2 is designed to be transparent, understandable and explainable to the public. Staff will communicate that prioritization does not mean that lower-tier programs or lower-risk areas are unimportant; rather, it provides a transparent basis for sequencing work and directing limited resources toward the greatest opportunities for risk reduction. By producing a clear picture of where the city is focusing resources, why, and how progress will be measured, the project advances the collaborative approach the community called for during the 2023-2024 CWPP update process, which included four webinars, a project webpage and interactive story map, open house events, written public feedback opportunities, and a public survey with 271 respondents. The pairwise prioritization survey that produced the Tier 1 program designations drew on input not only from the city staff serving on the Wildfire Resilience Team but also from 13 peer practitioners from western municipalities. The full set of finalized measures will be compiled into a public-facing dashboard covering all 10 Tier 1 programs, giving the community

a consistent annual view of progress toward risk reduction in the highest-priority areas of the WUI. The measures will be reported through the Wildfire Ready platform. Program-level engagement Many of the constituent programs within this project's inventory have their own engagement processes. Examples include the WRAP grant program, which conducts targeted outreach to WUI homeowners; the Detailed Home Assessment program, which engages homeowners directly through neighborhood-level outreach and preparedness events; the Community Emergency Preparedness program, which offered workshops to more than 330 participants in 2025; and the Wildfire Ready platform, which provides ongoing public access to wildfire risk information, program updates, and resilience resources. As Tier 1 programs are implemented engagement at the program and project level will continue. Boards and Commissions The Open Space Board of Trustees has engaged with wildfire resilience topics at 15 meetings since 2023, including a July 2026 update on the Wildfire Resilience Council Priority Project specifically: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Feb 2023: Update on Wildland Fire Resilience Programs Nov 2023: Wildland Fire Resilience Program Update: CWPP and Strategic Wildfire Mitigation Enhancements Sep 2023 Retreat: Wildland-Urban Interface Land Management and Fire Mitigation Discussion May 2024: Wildfire Resilient Landscapes: Update on WUI Fuels Management Jun 2024 Written Information: CWPP; OSMP Disaster Response Team Aug 2024: Wildfire Resilient Landscapes: CWPP Implementation Update Oct 2024 Retreat: Perimeter Mowing Program along Bluebell Road Dec 2024: OSBT Climate Action Update Mar 2025: Fuels Management Update May 2025 Field Trip: Shanahan Ridge Tall Oatgrass Fuels Management Jun 2025: CWPP Implementation Update (with BFR Chiefs) Jul 2025: OSMP Wildfire Prevention Initiative Feb 2026: Prescribed Fire in Grasslands Research with Dr. Katie Suding, CU Boulder

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Apr 2026: Preventative Hazard Closures and WUI Fuels Management Jul 2026: Update on Wildfire Resilience Council Priority Project

Next Steps for City Council Staff will use Council feedback from the August discussion to refine the Home Hardening Implementation Hub, program prioritization, geographic risk analysis, measures and targets. Staff will return to Council on October 22 with the finalized Tier 1 measures and targets and the complete prioritization framework. Beginning thereafter, progress will be tracked annually through a public-facing dashboard, with measures and targets reviewed and updated as conditions, resources, and understanding of wildfire risk evolve.

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Attachments Attachment A – Wildfire Resilience Project List Attachment B – Wildfire Resilience Program Summary Sheet